Switching voltage regulators are widely used in modern electronic systems for a variety of applications such as computing (server and mobile) and POLs (Point-of-Load Systems) for telecommunications because of their high efficiency and small amount of area/volume consumed by such converters. Widely accepted switching voltage regulator topologies include buck, boost, buck-boost, forward, flyback, half-bridge, full-bridge, and SEPIC topologies. Multiphase buck converters are particularly well suited for providing high current at low voltages needed by high-performance integrated circuits such as microprocessors, graphics processors, and network processors. Buck converters are implemented with active components such as a pulse width modulation (PWM) controller IC (integrated circuit), driver circuitry, one or more phases including power MOSFETs (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors), and passive components such as inductors, transformers or coupled inductors, capacitors, and resistors. Multiple phases (power stages) can be connected in parallel to the load through respective inductors to meet high output current requirements.
Many electronic systems, such as microprocessors, require power supplies to operate more efficiently in order to avoid thermal overload at high loads and to increase battery life particularly in portable systems. Advanced real-time embedded systems, including both battery-operated portable systems (such as laptops, cellular phones etc.) and non-portable systems (such as servers, desktops, etc.), often include one or more microprocessors where at the system level it is possible to reduce energy consumption by changing the frequency and voltage level of the microprocessor i.e. so-called dynamic voltage scaling. Dynamic voltage scaling reduces the energy consumption by changing processor speed and voltage at run-time depending on the needs of the applications running on the microprocessor. It has been shown that the processor power consumption increases in convex fashion with frequency, therefore dynamic voltage scaling helps to significantly reduce the dynamic energy consumption of the processor. This technique is also commonly referred to as dynamic voltage transitioning. Due to the importance of dynamic voltage transition in switched mode power converters, there is growing demand for new control techniques that improve the voltage transitioning response which in turn results in even more power saving and overall efficiency in the switched mode power converters.